MATTHEW WRIGHT

The boundaries are gone. We may not have all realized it yet, but they’ve dissolved right in front of us. Certainly, many of us—maybe most of us—are playing as if the old lines were still there, fighting to honor our past divisions. But the truth is, they’re gone. As Brie Stoner pointed out in her last blog post, for those of us who grew up with the internet—that is, who grew up watching the internet grow up—the old lines just don’t make sense anymore.

The religious landscape is shifting—no one will argue with that. People are leaving traditional religious frameworks in droves, while the number of those identifying as “spiritual but not religious” (SBNR) is on the rise. While some of the religious faithful decry this shift as inherently negative, I believe there’s a framing in which we can see it not only as a hopeful sign for the human family, but for our religious traditions as well.